Housman, When I watch the living meet

Number XII, A Shopshire Lad

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

Rhyme: The stanzas rhyme A-B/A-B, which is a typical “ballad” form.

Meter: The meter is interesting. Other common ballad structure would be iambic lines of 8-6-8-6 syllables, such as number XVIII

Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave

Or, number II, 8-8-8-8

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough

Each of these forms give a different feel. Number XII uses 7 syllable lines. This forces the first syllable to be accented. The effect is to give the feel a forced march: the step is quite, the pace insistent.

This matches the imagery of the first stanza: There is a march along the street “the moving pageant file”. The poet is watching a parade pass-by: the whole world is marching from this world into the next.

Basic theme: Be mindful of death, because it is coming and will bring all this life to naught.

Perspective: The poet writes in the first person. He realizes himself to be temporarily alive. He thinks of what will happen when he (and everyone else) dies.

Imagery:

Parade:

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street

A lodger:

Where I lodge a little while,

Heat/inside a hot house:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,

Dust/Lodging

Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

The imagery is interesting, because it picks up on the imagery of the parade and heat. The parade could easily be on a dirt street — the poem was published in 1896. The combination of dirt, heat and parade naturally suggest “dust”. Dust alludes to “dust-to-dust”. Here is the selection from the Book of Common Prayer, which Housman would have heard:

Then, while the earth shall be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the Minister shall say,

Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.Nation:

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;

Passions:
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Love, marriage, sleep, death:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.Observations:

The heat, passions and pageantry of life, and even more the brevity of it all, are contrasted with the silence and endlessness of death. He makes the observation that while he lives, he must come to the realization that he will die and all this will be nothing, will be silent, will be unknown to the citizens of that “nation”. Even the most profound of relationships, marriage, will have no effect upon one after death.

What does not happen here is the most interesting: Housman draws no conclusion, he merely observes. He has no answer to death.

There is an implicit argument for stoicism:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
[The] Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

If I am feeling passion (hate and lust); remember, these passions will soon become nothing. The effect of such a realization would be to deflate the importance of the present passion. If I am filled with hate, right now, remember this “revenge [will be] forgot.” If I am filled with sexual desire (lust), even that — even if there is a marriage — that will have no effect upon in the very near future.

The poem merely counsels, at most, resignation and detachment from the present loves and hates. In this sounds a stoic theme (such this from book 4 of Aurelius’ Meditations):

It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any one else like them, who have carried out many to be buried, and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

It is very difficult for this resignation to bring one to any action. Yes, it may alleviate at times the pain of some current event: who cares, I’ll soon be dead. But that also has a tendency to drain lovely things of their beauty:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

This offers a freedom from fear of vengeance,

There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

But it also robs us love. It is good to contrast this with Shakespeare’s sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.